Obama/One term?

[Mandos]

Fifteen years is not the worst case scenario on bill failure.  It is roughly the time frame, on Senate bill failure, for the issue to be revisited at all, in any way that might result in real improvements.  If you're REALLY lucky, twelve years.  And the episode then will mostly be about recovery from the damage of the lost years, not improvement from where we are today.

It is a terrible bill, but there is no more plausible path to decent health reform via the political system than through the Senate bill.  I wish I were wrong, but recent events continue to bear this out.  I'd be pleasantly surprised if Anthony Weiner, a single-payer Congresscritter who wants the bill to fail, manages to sneak in a Medicare age reduction into the budget or whatever he is proposing to do.  

[While the Senate bill was for the most part a corrupt give-away to the insurance industry, here's a critique of some of the more trenchant critiques of it as policy by a labour lawyer who negotiates health insurance on behalf of unions:

http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2009/12/mo ... fties.html ]

I read some of the FDL and FDL Seminal enormous comment threads before the Coakley defeat, and let me tell you, the Defeat Coakley contingent was and is deeply deluded in so many ways.  It only has salutary effects if you believe that, as apparently you do, "they need the crisis."  You are in very good company: Ian Welsh not only believes they need to be defeated in 2010, but that Obama needs to be brought down in 2012, the USA must endure a right-wing populist from 2012-2016, and so on and so forth in an elaborate sequence of contingent prognostications.

I for one have no confidence that this process will have a happy ending for the left and the goals of the left and the world.  It is certainly unlikely to have any positive effects on health reform.  Whether it has an effect on Obama's career, Emanuel's career, etc, is a side-issue; let it be said, however, that unless there is a credible Democratic (or Green or whatever) replacement for Obama in 2012, anything achievable through the political system is hitched directly to Obama's career for the forseeable future.

[skdadl]

You probably read more FDL than I do. To me, FDL and EW are not the same place, and when EW goes front page, I back off because all the kids invade. I do admire Jane, but the commenters are something else.

I haven't spoken directly to Ian about any of this stuff, and of course I don't wish it upon them. But it has occurred to me that President Petraeus is a definite possibility in 2012, and they would just be fulfilling their entelechy if they did that. They are a fascist state, after all -- might as well make it official. I hope that isn't our fate too, but I'd say we're close.

I'm still trying to get to the end of Scott Horton on what happened at Camp No. Sentence by sentence, every sentence I read, I punctuate by shouting at Holder and Obama. These are obscene people. Nothing on earth requires me to be loyal to them. Nothing.

[Mandos]

Like I said, it's not a matter of loyalty, it's a matter of interests and consequences.  For anyone who believes that engagement with the US political system is possible or necessary, there are certain constraints they have to work with.  For those who believe that no such accomodation is possible, then there's another set of things to do.  I still believe that both have their place.  So for the political track on health care, I still believe that giving Obama what he wanted was the only option.

[Boom Boom]

Like I said, it's not a matter of loyalty, it's a matter of interests and consequences.  For anyone who believes that engagement with the US political system is possible or necessary, there are certain constraints they have to work with.  For those who believe that no such accomodation is possible, then there's another set of things to do.  I still believe that both have their place.  So for the political track on health care, I still believe that giving Obama what he wanted was the only option.

Not sure what you meant by that last sentence, because Americans were going to get screwed royally by Obama's health plan - except for health care insurers, that is. I'm reading responses to the Mass results from Americans on FB, and it appears most are happy the Dems got taken to the cleaners last night.

ETA: I posted Nom Solomon's column in my replies to friends discussing the results, and they all agree with him:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/20-0

excerpt:

Fixated on passage of something that could be called "healthcare reform," the Democratic establishment has propagated the myth that enacting such a law is vital to the political viability of the Obama presidency.

With few exceptions, the most progressive members of Congress have twisted themselves into knots to move with the choreography from the White House. The worse the healthcare bill got, the more they strained to lavish incongruous praise on it.

Defenders of the current healthcare legislation don't like to acknowledge how thoroughly corporate it is. In the wake of the Senate election in Massachusetts, we're sure to see a new wave of mass emails from progressive groups urging a renewed fight for a public option. But the Obama administration threw a public option under the Pennsylvania Avenue bus well before the GOP victory in Massachusetts finalized its burial.

[skdadl]

Hi! I'm an American! I like handing my money over to rich people! *addle-pated Barbie smiley*

[Boom Boom]

:


ETA: The Democrats have to stop acting like Republicans if they want the support of progressives in that country - that's what I'm hearing.

ETA: a friend wrote to me on Facebook with this comment:  "The issue is relatively mainstream and and increasingly widespread legitimate skeptiscism of the claim that these enormously complex bills were going to make Health Care more plentiful *and* cheaper for most everyone. Clearly unrealistic."

[Mandos]

But that is definitely not the lesson that the Democratic leadership is learning from this.  They are, quite predictably, learning that they must pitch even further to the right.

The point is moot, anyway, as it looks like Obama is backing down from the Senate bill.   There are signs that some Democrats may attempt a Medicare age reduction in the budget (a good idea, and better than the Senate bill in some ways), but at the moment it's a Fat Chance.  The window on reform may now actually be shut.

However, if this

Hi! I'm an American! I like handing my money over to rich people! *addle-pated Barbie smiley*

is a reference to the mandates---the most unpopular part of either ObamaCare or RomneyCare---rest assured that any system that relies heavily on private insurers (more than one developed country with universal coverage) will have these.  Unfortunately, ObamaCare failed in the cost control department, but so does the status quo.

[skdadl]

Next thing we know, Mandos, you're gonna be advising me to vote Liberal in the next election. And you know what I'm gonna say about that, eh?

I mean, it is the same stupid discussion that we have here. Maybe, just maybe, if I lived in one of those few ridings (and there aren't many) where a Lib could defeat a Con and the Dipper wasn't in play, maybe, just maybe I'd play. But I'd have to pray a lot first. I'd want a personal conversation with the ghost of Tommy Douglas.

I'd vote for Ralph Goodale, mind. I'd never thought he was cute before, but now I do. I think he has a safe seat, though. Anyone who can vote for Mulcair should -- also very cute.

[Boom Boom]

I was in the US with my gf back in around 2000, and she had a dreadful fall and twisted her ankle (initially she thought it was broken), and we spent hours negotiating with her HMO for the best care... before she could be seen for treatment. Private health insurers are the devil incarnate. To me Obama's "reforms" of health care look more like extortion to benefit these scumbags, but I actually haven't read the legalese that much of this comprises.

[Mandos]

Next thing we know, Mandos, you're gonna be advising me to vote Liberal in the next election. And you know what I'm gonna say about that, eh?

I mean, it is the same stupid discussion that we have here. Maybe, just maybe, if I lived in one of those few ridings (and there aren't many) where a Lib could defeat a Con and the Dipper wasn't in play, maybe, just maybe I'd play. But I'd have to pray a lot first. I'd want a personal conversation with the ghost of Tommy Douglas.

No, it is not the same discussion.  You said it yourself: you might be able to convince yourself to vote for a Liberal to defeat a Conservative under certain circumstances, but those circumstances are rare.  In the USA, those circumstances are EXTREMELY COMMON, because the system is very different.

There are two basic problems with the USA:

1. A political system specifically and explicitly designed to prevent radical solutions to systemic problems.  (In all fairness to its creators, radical solutions were far more threatening to them than systemic problems were frequent.  The situation is somewhat reversed in our current world.)

2. Neoliberal trade orthodoxy (or whatever you want to call it) entrenched in the political elite, particularly insofar as there is no Communist threat.

Until you have a solution to at least one of these problems, there are only choices between how fast the slide downhill is going to be.  I think there's more carnage in a faster slide downhill.

[Boom Boom]

Good analysis, Mandos. Now, can anyone explain why Harper loves the USA so much, given these realities???

[Mandos]

Because he is a Randroid who shares the same overall worldview as neoliberal economic orthodoxy, with the added bonus of rejecting the lip service toward the existence of market failures which the neoliberals are often willing to concede.

[Alison]

can anyone explain why Harper loves the USA

Because they elect him?
In Aug 2008 the American Chamber of Commerce held a $1000-a-plate fund-raising campaign for John McCain in Calgary because 80,000 Americans live and work there.
Thatsa lotta Murkins. I wonder how many are dual citizens who can vote.

[skdadl]

There are two basic problems with the USA:

1. A political system specifically and explicitly designed to prevent radical solutions to systemic problems.  (In all fairness to its creators, radical solutions were far more threatening to them than systemic problems were frequent.  The situation is somewhat reversed in our current world.)

2. Neoliberal trade orthodoxy (or whatever you want to call it) entrenched in the political elite, particularly insofar as there is no Communist threat.

I don't agree that #2 is a significant difference from the mindset of Canadian elites at all. To me (and I've been pondering the founding docs since the early 70s), the only significant structural difference in the U.S. is the presidency, the union of state and government in one office, which obviously inclines them towards militarism. That was a bad mistake, but if you've read the British and French C17 and C18, the Merkin founding documents look pretty familiar, banal, even. The presidency is the one structural anomaly.

The most basic problem with the U.S. is cultural, and some but not all of that has percolated up over the border. The more modern the perversion, the more Canadians partake of it. Obama is a Disney character, and that works on a lot of Canadians just as it does on Americans, and that is very sad.

Several layers down, though, there are nightmares that Canadians don't mainly share with Americans. Nathaniel Hawthorne would be your guide there. Hawthorne would get Limbaugh and Beck and Palin right away. And about half the population of the U.S. understand what Hawthorne understood too.

Anyway, as I'm following their current discussions, the people I like are fighting off the same stupid arguments that Dippers here have listened to for over a generation. Unite the left. Like, John Manley is the left? Fuggedaboudit.

[Mandos]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that #1 and #2 are necessarily differences.  #1 is, but #2 certainly isn't---however, together they form a Gordion knot for political change favoring the left side of the spectrum.  

There are more differences between the American and Canadian political system than just the presidency, although that is a very big one.  The American Senate has evolved to become a body with real power, much more so than the Canadian Senate or the current form of the British HoL.